


Get you out the friend zone

by lowriseflare, threeguesses



Category: Superstore (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 09:16:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11101518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowriseflare/pseuds/lowriseflare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: Three days after the tornado, corporate sends out a store-wide email telling everyone to report to the Richmond branch for reassignment.





	Get you out the friend zone

**Author's Note:**

> Can't stop, won't stop. Sequel to [Made Your Whole Year In A Week](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10966041). Title is The Weeknd, The Hills.

Three days after the tornado, corporate sends out a store-wide email telling everyone to report to the Richmond branch for reassignment.

Jonah thinks about texting Amy, but he’s texted Amy exactly once since they slept together, to send her this really great in-depth NYT piece on for-profit prisons, and she didn't reply, so. Instead he drinks three shots of espresso standing up by the counter where he kissed her and changes his shirt six times. He has to pull off the interstate twice to pee.

The Richmond store anchors one end of a giant strip mall on a commercial highway full of fast food joints and car dealerships. Jonah parks three careful spots away from a pickup truck with a Toby Keith bumper sticker and screws with his hair for a minute in the rearview, then gets out and makes it halfway across the lot before doubling back to check his teeth in the driver’s side mirror.

“What are you doing?” Amy asks as he's straightening up.

“Um.” Jonah turns around too quickly, whacking his knee against the car door. She’s standing a couple spots away wearing a black V-neck and a dubious expression. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She didn’t get any less beautiful in the last forty-eight hours, he notices with some despair. He was kind of hoping the universe would do him a solid there.

They stare at each other for a minute before Amy makes a face and looks away. “Okay!” she says, clapping her hands. “Well, I’m glad we got that out of the way. This totally didn't affect our professional relationship at all.”

“What didn't?” Garrett asks as he rolls up beside them.

“The tornado,” Amy says without missing a beat. “Jonah cried in my arms. Let's go.”

“Embarrassing, dude,” Garrett says, and rolls ahead of them into the store.

 

 

The meeting is mercifully quick, Jeff standing at the front of the breakroom and rattling off reassignments while Glenn sits beside him, barely holding back tears. Garrett and Cheyenne are headed here, to Richmond; Myrtle, Dina, and Matteo are going to Collinswood. Jonah himself is splitting shifts between Clayville and Shrewsbury, and Amy is staying on-site with Glenn to help organize the reopening.

Jonah’s gaze cuts in her direction before he can quell the impulse. Normally the two of them gravitate toward each other at meetings—at least, he _thinks_ they gravitate toward each other? He guesses it could just be him gravitating toward her—but this morning she’s sitting on the other side of the room between Cheyenne and Sandra. Jonah isn't sure if that means anything or not.

She must feel him looking because she turns her head and catches his eye, her expression unreadable. Jonah’s whole body goes hot, then cold, cycling through half a dozen flight or fight responses in the split second before she looks away again. God, sleeping with her was a mistake, his heart rate is never going to slow down again for as long as he lives.

Jeff wraps the meeting up a few minutes later, thanking them all for their time and reassuring them that the store will be up and running again in a few months. Looking around, Jonah realizes that not everybody got reassignments. Everyone else realizes it too and suddenly a dozen people are asking questions at once, shouting over one another to be heard. Up at the front of the room, Glenn hides his face in his hands.

“Time to go,” Garrett says from down by Jonah’s side, beckoning to Amy and Cheyenne.

Jonah stares at him. “But what about—”

Garrett shrugs. “They got laid off, dude. Just be glad it wasn't you.”

They all end up meeting outside in the parking lot, Jonah and Garrett and Amy and Cheyenne and Matteo and Dina and Sandra, plus Justine and Myrtle and some guys from the warehouse. It feels like the beginning of _Lost_ when everyone first gets introduced on the beach, and they’re the lucky few to survive the plane crash. Jonah wishes someone was starting with him at Clayville tomorrow.

“Sucks to be those losers, am I right?” Marcus asks with a nervous chuckle, jamming his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants and nodding back in the direction of the store. He got reassigned to the regional warehouse in Millwood, which seems like kind of a boon for a person who’s technically been fired twice in the last three months. “I don’t know about you guys, but I could use a brewski.”

“I’ll go!” Cheyenne says immediately.

Garrett tilts his head to the side, considering. “That is… not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, actually.”

Jonah grimaces. “Guys,” he points out, “it’s nine-thirty in the morning.”

“Don’t be a wimp, Jonah,” Amy says, staring right at him. Jonah feels it like a shot of espresso right to the heart. “I’m in.”

He swallows. “Yeah, fine. I’m in too.”

  

 

The only place within thirty miles that's open and serving is a shitty dive bar Matteo finds on Yelp, with sticky floors and a lottery-ticket vending machine. Jonah gets sent up to the front for pitchers, and somehow when he gets back he winds up in the creaky booth next to Amy, sweating nervously in the lack of air conditioning. She doesn't acknowledge him except to demand that he dole out less foamy pours.

“So,” Garrett says, holding up his plastic cup. “To not getting fired.”

“To not getting fired,” everyone echoes, clinking. One of the regulars parked over at the bar raises his mug in mock salute.

Jonah drinks his cup of watery beer and tries to concentrate on something besides Amy’s body beside him. They’re not even really touching—Marcus is pressed way more tightly against Jonah’s other side, his watch digging uncomfortably into Jonah’s arm—but Jonah is hyper-aware of every single brush of her elbow anyway. His palms are clammy and damp.

Still, he likes his coworkers, and there's something weirdly cheerful about being out with them at ten am on a Tuesday. After two beers he can feel himself start to relax. It kind of reminds him of going to parties back in B school actually, the tension finally draining out of his body and the alcohol filing off all his sharp edges and quieting the noisiest voices in his brain. Of course, in the end he needed a lot more than a couple Bud Lights to solve his B school problems, but still. He's reaching for the pitcher again when Amy digs her short nails into his thigh.

“Slow down,” she murmurs, quiet enough so only he can hear her. She smells like cherry chapstick and coconut shampoo. “I need you to be able to drive.”

Jonah drops the pitcher and whips his head around to stare at her, but she's already turned away from him, deep in conversation with Cheyenne. She’s let her hair swing down to cover the side of her face.

Okay then. Jonah takes a deep, even breath, and pours himself a glass of water. He expects her to acknowledge the switch but instead she keeps right on ignoring him, shifting away so her leg is no longer touching his under the table. The water is disgusting, warm and faintly sweet from the soda gun. Jonah drinks three glasses just for something to do with his hands.

He waits for further instructions but Amy seems to be perfectly content to never speak to him again, chatting to Garrett and Matteo without so much as glancing in his direction. Finally Jonah has to get up from the booth to pee. He splashes water on his face in the tiny checker-floored bathroom, telling himself to calm down. His cheeks are so red it looks like he has a fever.

Amy’s waiting for him when he gets out, leaning up against the wall with her arms crossed. He stops short. “I— _hey_ ,” he says. His voice is an entire octave higher than normal.

Amy makes a face, and it takes Jonah a second to register she's making it at herself. “Hey,” she echoes, looking somewhere over his shoulder.  

She's _nervous_ , Jonah realizes, and has to physically restrain himself from going down on one knee in the greasy hallway. For a second neither one of them says anything. “So, um,” he starts finally. “Why do I have to be able to drive? Are we doing a heist? Pulling a Thelma and Louise?”

“Shut up,” Amy says, but she’s ducking her head and smiling. Holy _shit_. “Obviously we can't leave in the same car.”

Jonah nods seriously. “Obviously.” He slides his hands into his pockets so he doesn't touch her, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “So if not the nearest casino, then where?” He expects her to name a restaurant, or maybe even the movies. He wouldn't mind holding her hand in an empty theater at 11 AM on a Tuesday.

Instead she looks at him like he's brain dead and rolls her eyes. “Your place,” she says. “We can't go to mine.”

Jonah blinks about a thousand times. “Um,” he says, nodding so hard and fast it's a miracle his head doesn't pop right off his body. He tries to hide a grin, and completely can't. “Sure.”

Amy sighs. “You leave first,” she tells him. “I’ll tell them you had a nervous stomach from all the excitement.”

“That is not so far from the truth, actually,” Jonah admits before he can stop himself, then immediately feels like a moron.

But Amy grins. “I’ll see you at your house in half an hour, dork,” she says, then slips two fingers through his belt loops and yanks once, hard. Jonah feels it right in his dick. “Don't dawdle.”

 

 

Outside in his car Jonah digs through his glove compartment until he finds a box of cinnamon Altoids, then shoves enough of them into his mouth to burn off all his taste buds and floors it in the direction of home.

Back at the apartment he dumps every stray item of clothing into his closet, stacks all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and changes the sheets so fast he skins his knuckles on the shitty popcorn walls. It's bright and sunny in the bedroom, even with the blinds closed. Jonah cracks them open a sliver and hopes like all hell Amy doesn't notice and make him close them. This time he wants to see every fucking inch of her.

He opens all the windows in the living room to the warm spring breeze, then reapplies his deodorant and sits down on the couch to wait. He wonders if maybe he shouldn't make a playlist.

Thirty minutes and two Spotify mixes later, Amy still hasn't arrived.

He gets up and straightens the books on his bookshelves. He wipes some crusty toothpaste off the edge of the bathroom sink. As he’s refilling the water in his ice trays it occurs to him to wonder if maybe she changed her mind and isn’t coming after all, but he shoves that thought to the back of his head and sets to digging some crumbs out of the cracks in his kitchen counters. Ten minutes after _that_ he starts to worry that maybe she wrecked her car.

Jonah picks up his phone to text her, then puts it back down on the end table. Picks it up again. He’s promised himself over and over that he’s going to be cool about this, somehow failing to take into account that he’s never been cool about anything in his life.

 _Did you die?_ he types finally, which isn’t exactly chill but at least gets the point across. He’s literally just hit send when the doorbell rings.

“What happened to not dawdling?” he asks as he opens it, sounding more peevish than he necessarily means to, but the end of the sentence gets cut off when Amy drops her purse in the foyer and slams her mouth up against his.

“Fuck,” Jonah gasps, completely unable to help himself. Amy ignores him, taking his face between both her hands and kissing him over and over and over again, her mouth wet and hot and eager. Jonah instantly forgives her for every single thing she’s ever done.

She breaks away after a minute, panting. “God, did you drink an entire bottle of cinnamon mouthwash or something?” she asks, wrinkling her nose. Jonah laughs nervously.

“What? No.” He gestures behind him. “Do you want to come in and—”

Amy reaches down and pulls her t-shirt over her head.

“Shit,” he says. So much for not wanting to do it with the lights on. She definitely wasn’t wearing that kind of bra the last time they did this, lacy and new-looking, and she _definitely_ did not have that expression on her face. His stomach does something violent and frightening.

“Yeah, yeah,” Amy says, but she looks pleased with herself. “Take your clothes off.”

Jonah starts unbuttoning his shirt obediently, feeling weirdly shy. “Uh, all of them or—”

Amy rolls her eyes and reaches for his dick.

“Oh my god,” he says, thrusting up into her hand before he can stop himself. They’re still standing in his tiny front hallway, next to the last tenant’s ugly key hooks and a mostly dead ficus he took home from the store to try and save. Amy squeezes once, roughly, her short nails zipping against the denim, and Jonah’s head thunks back against the wall. “Okay, yeah,” he gasps. “All of them is fine.”

He toes his shoes off and reaches back over his head for his undershirt, fumbles with the buckle on his belt. It’s not until he’s got his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his boxers—they’re printed with lobsters, he sees with dull embarrassment, a gift from his mom last Hanukkah—that he realizes Amy’s just standing there in her bra and corduroys, dark eyes flicking up and down his body in open assessment. Even in her ankle boots, she’s a full head shorter than him. “Um,” he says. “Aren’t you going to—?”

“In a minute,” Amy says snottily, like he’s the one who’s being pushy. Then she drops to her knees on the builder-grade carpet.

“Shit,” Jonah says, his voice cracking. Amy grins at him, a real grin with all her teeth, and yanks his boxers down.

“I’m good at this,” she informs him, and oh god, Jonah cannot think about that in any kind of context. Then she ducks her head and licks him from base to tip, wet and messy and confident, and he nearly bites off his own tongue.

“Amy, _fuck_ ,” he gasps, locking his knees against a dangerous wobble. When he looks down she’s watching him with interest. She quirks her eyebrows when their eyes meet, and Jonah laughs and groans all at once, reaching back to brace himself against the wall. Amy raises her eyebrows again and takes him deep—holy shit, takes him _really_ deep—and he has to tense literally every muscle in his body so he doesn’t come.

It’s only a second before she pulls back off again, thank god, but it feels like an eternity. Jonah grabs her hair as soon as she’s clear and holds. “Fuck,” he says, his knees shaking. “Fuck, holy fuck, okay. You definitely can't do that again.”

Amy lets him slip out of her mouth, and he realizes that she’s smiling. “Why not?” she asks. Her voice sounds low and rough and hot. Jonah closes his eyes.

“Why do you think?” he asks. He feels her hand on his wrist, extracting it from her hair, and he turns his palm to interlace their fingers. When he pulls to help her up, though, she doesn’t budge.

“Okay,” she promises, letting go. “I won’t do it again.”

Jonah’s eyes pop open. “Amy, seriously.” She takes him in her mouth again, wet tight suction, and he groans. “ _Amy_ , I mean it, I’m not gonna be able to stand.”

That makes her smile. “So sit,” she says, pulling off and wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

Jonah laughs. “What, like right here?” Amy quirks her eyebrows like, _sure why not_ , and he stops laughing. “Amy, seriously, I’m—” He pauses, weirdly shy about saying the actual words.

She looks at him for a moment, considering. “Are you gonna be able to twice?” she asks, and it takes him a second to realize what she’s getting at.

“Oh my god,” he says. It feels like every inch of his body is shaking. “Yeah, but only after like an hour, so—”

“Great,” Amy says, and bends her head again. Jonah’s eyes widen in shocked, jagged pleasure, both at the capable swipe of her tongue and at the fact that apparently she intends to stay here with him in his apartment for that long. Then she wraps her hand around the base of his dick, stroking hard and rhythmic, and his brain pretty much whites out entirely.

It only takes another minute, her grip and her mouth and how long her eyelashes look from this angle, her bright hair falling into her face. Jonah reaches down and tucks it behind her ear, he can't help himself, touching the hinge of her jaw with his thumb and feeling it work.

“Ames,” he manages finally, wanting to be gentlemanly about this and not wanting to embarrass himself in equal measure. “Amy, you gotta—” he breaks off, voice cracking. He takes a deep breath, his whole face on fire. “I’m gonna come, Ames.”

Amy nods. “Mm-hmm,” she says, glancing up at him with an expression on her face that pretty clearly communicates _that’s the idea, college boy_. Then she goes right back to what she was doing.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jonah gasps. He has exactly one second to put both palms on the wall so he doesn’t reach for her, and then he’s coming so hard he can feel it in his teeth. He’s still in her mouth and he can see her throat moving and everything is so warm and wet and it's _Amy_ , holy fuck. Jonah has had a girl pull this trick maybe three times in his entire life.

“Shit,” he says when he’s finished. His knees are giving out so he slides down the wall to land on his ass, shaking like a fucking leaf. Amy bursts out laughing. “Shut up,” Jonah tells her, but he’s too shocked to really be embarrassed. “C’mere.”

He sees her eyes widen in the split second before he kisses her, like she didn’t think he was going to, but then her tongue is in his mouth and he’s hauling her into his lap. The taste is awful, obviously, but Jonah doesn’t care. He pops the button on her corduroys and yanks them down her legs, desperate to get his hands on her. Her boots are in the way so he leaves the pants around her knees and slides a hand into her underwear instead, swearing out loud at how soaked she is. Amy makes a quiet, urgent noise and sinks her nails into his shoulders.

“Oh god,” she gasps right against his ear, and her voice is maybe the sexiest thing he’s ever heard. But then she pulls away. “Okay, no, pause, I need a glass of water.”

“Oh!” Jonah says. “Um, right.” He scrambles up off the carpet to get it, trotting into the kitchen and filling a glass at the sink. When he turns around to hand it to her she’s standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, rubbing one shin with the sole of her opposite foot. She took off her own boots, he notes vaguely. Without her clothes on the curves of her body are even more pronounced, belly and hips and ass, her thighs whiskered with a scattering of silvery stretch marks. When she reaches out to take the glass he holds onto it for an extra second before he lets go.

Amy makes a face. “Stop smiling,” she scolds mildly.

“I can’t,” Jonah blurts, then feels the tips of his ears go red. God, she’s still _married_ , he reminds himself. Even if she does actually leave Adam, that doesn’t mean—

Amy drains the glass of water in two long gulps. “So what’s the food situation here?” she asks as she sets it down on the counter, like maybe she can read his thoughts and wants to save him from himself.

“Oh!” Jonah says again. God, everything is fucking startling to him right now. It feels like she broke his brain. “Well, we could order Thai food. Or actually there’s a Vietnamese place I really like that delivers, super authentic, they cook the noodles in—”

Amy rolls her eyes.

“I have a frozen pizza,” Jonah amends quickly. It’s gluten free and organic, but he doesn’t mention that part.

Amy grins. “Sold.”

 

 

She makes fun of his pizza selection for over five minutes (“You don’t even have celiac, why would you choose to do this to yourself?”), hopping up on the counter and ribbing him hard and merciless. Jonah is so distracted by her body and her thighs and his own embarrassed shyness that something in his brain misfires and he finally says, “God, whatever, I didn’t even buy it.”

Amy stops smirking immediately. “Kristen?” she asks, in a voice Jonah has sometimes heard her use on Adam.

Fuck. “Yep,” Jonah says. “She was doing Whole 30.” And apparently he was a kamikaze pilot in a previous life, because some truly insane urge prompts him to add, “Were you actually jealous? Or was that just Glenn?”

He expects her to roll her eyes and tell him to get over himself, but instead she shrugs. “Mostly Glenn.”

Jonah’s entire stomach clenches. “Mostly?”

Amy screws her face up, like maybe she's said more than she meant to. “Oh, whatever,” she says, waving her hand vaguely. “You can date whoever you want, clearly. It’s none of my business. Just, with Kristen, you know.” She tilts her head to one side, then the other. “Shitting where you eat, etcetera.”

Jonah nods, trying and mostly failing not to grin at her. “Romantic talk, Dubanowski,” he says. Then, because apparently he just cannot help himself, “So what would you call this, exactly?”

Amy’s eyes widen. “What, _this_?” She gestures between them, opening her mouth and closing it again. Finally she looks away, huffing. “How long is your yuppie pizza supposed to take, anyway?”

Jonah gets the distinct feeling he’s pushing his luck. “’Nother few minutes,” he says, then puts both hands on her warm, soft waist and ducks his head to kiss her. Amy kisses back aggressively, biting at his lower lip hard enough to hurt. After a minute he pops her bra open, rubbing up and down her silky back. Amy shivers.

“You're not doing this to me on your kitchen counter,” she says warningly.

“Doing what?” Jonah asks, biting her jaw. He nudges her chin up and licks at the parallel lines on her neck, tasting salt and skin, then noses leisurely down across her breasts and sucks at one of her dark nipples. By now Amy's shifting her hips on the formica, her hands sunk deep into his hair. She's exerting just the slightest pressure, pushing his head this way and that. For a second Jonah considers going down on his knees too, but then she’d be too high up to reach. He straightens back up instead and slides a hand up her thigh, cupping her through her underwear.

“Can I do this to you?” he asks quietly, looking down at her lowered eyelashes.

Amy glances up at him, presumably so he can see her rolling her eyes at the question. “Well, you better do _something_ ,” she says, with the exact same inflection as when she catches him lurking around at work running out the minutes until the end of his shift. “Don’t just stand there talking— _f_ _uck,_ Jonah.” She breaks off with a loud, ragged gasp as he squeezes, arching right up into his hand. “Um, yep,” she says, and he’s pleased to note she sounds significantly less salty than she did a second ago. “That’s good.”

“Yeah?” Jonah grins and gets closer, crowding her more than he’s had the balls to try doing before now. “Take these off,” he says, slipping two fingers into the elastic at the crease of her thigh and tugging. “Wanna see you.”

Amy scowls again as she does it, bracing herself with one hand and wriggling around ungracefully, but then she’s naked and holy hell Jonah is never going to be able to make a sandwich again without thinking about this. He curls his hands around her thighs and presses them open, not letting up until they're as wide as they can go. “Jesus,” Amy says quietly. Jonah grins.

“I’m good at this,” he tells her. Her only response is to clutch at his shoulders silently and God, that's cool, it's like college all over again, figuring out how to make girls come. When he slips his hand back between her legs, she's so wet it kills him. He wants to tell her—wants to lean close to her ear and say _Amy, you’re wet_ —but it feels several steps past the line. He slides a finger inside her instead, curling it until she arches.

“Jonah,” she groans, knocking her head lightly off the cabinets. “Come on.”

Jonah hums a _patience, grasshopper_ sound at her, pulling his finger out and pushing another in beside it, finding her clit with his thumb. “Shit,” Amy hisses as he rubs in slick, messy circles, tilting her hips up and wrapping her arms around his neck. Her forehead fits right into the crook of his shoulder. “ _Please_.”

Jonah swallows hard, closing his eyes for a second. She said that last time too and it doesn’t screw with his head any less to hear it again, the idea that she wants him to touch her this way. The idea that she’s _asking_. He works his free hand in between them, smoothing his palm up her rib cage and squeezing roughly at a breast. Amy muffles a whine into his neck.

“That okay?” he asks, rubbing between her legs a little harder. She’s rocking now, fucking herself onto his fingers. Jonah’s pretty sure he’s not going to need the full hour after all.

“Yes,” Amy gasps, clutching at him. Her breath puffs out against his skin, damp and warm. Jonah ducks his head and kisses her jaw, then the warm plane of her cheek, concentrating on keeping his thumb on her clit. Amy groans and turns her head for a second to kiss him back, distracted and glancing off the side of his mouth, and God, that should not be something that stops Jonah’s heart dead in his chest. “Okay,” she says, flexing her hands against his shoulders. “Okay, you’re good at this.”

Jonah laughs. “Told you so,” he says, even though he's not even doing anything that special. He starts twisting his wrist a little as he fucks her, learning what angle makes her clamp down on his fingers. Amy moans a whiny, needy moan that makes him smile. “Like that?” he asks.

“Like that,” she actually says back, all serious and adorable. When he presses down hard on her clit, she adds, “Oh my god, Jonah, please.”

“You don't have to beg,” he promises again, which is stupid because he loves hearing it more than he loves his own life. “I swear.”

“Are you telling me to shut up?” Amy pants against his neck, arching her hips even higher.

“What? _No_ ,” Jonah says immediately, feeling his eyes go wide. “No no no, not at all, I just—” He shakes his head. “I really, _really_ like doing this, okay? Like. Amy. I would literally do this all fucking day.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Amy repeats breathlessly. He can’t tell if it’s a good _oh my god_ or a “you’re corny and embarrassing” _oh my god_ , but in the end it doesn’t matter because just then she grabs his wrist and jerks it back to where it was a second ago. “There,” she says, hips chasing his fingers. “Right there, holy shit.”

“Okay.” Jonah nods, focusing. “I got you.” He concentrates on watching the tiny changes in her expression, his head quieting down like it hardly ever does when he isn’t asleep; he’s pretty sure he’s maybe ten seconds away from making her come all over his hand on his kitchen counter, which is also of course the exact moment the timer on the oven starts to ding.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Amy groans, all breathless and annoyed, pulling away from him and leaning back against the cabinets. “Hurry up,” she says, gesturing imperiously at the oven.

Jonah grins. “In a second,” he says, and bends down to lick hard and fast at her clit. Amy shrieks, nearly kicking him in the face, but then she's going off like a bomb, spasming around his fingers and shaking so hard she nearly dislodges him entirely. Jonah stays with her doggedly, curling his free arm around her thigh and licking all through the aftershocks. When he finally stands up out of the awkward half-crouch he’s holding, he sees she’s covered her mouth with both hands.

“No fair,” he says, still grinning as he reaches over to flick the oven timer. Amy takes her hands away.

“Oh my god,” she says, very quietly and very seriously.

Jonah feels his cheeks pink up. “Good?” he can't resist asking. He tries to remember the last time he felt this pleased with himself, and can’t—not even when he finished the _Times_ crossword in pen a couple of weekends ago. Not even when he got cast as Pippin in the spring of his senior year.

“ _Ye_ _s_ ,” Amy says dazedly. She looks so fucking shocked Jonah almost wonders if he should be offended, only then she smiles at him, slow and wide and lovely, and nope, he’s still feeling just fine. “Okay,” she continues, shaking her head and blinking, like she's coming back to herself. “Let’s eat your disgusting pizza.” She hops down off the counter and scoops her underwear up off the linoleum, straightening up so she can pull it back on.

“Don't,” he blurts, before he can think to stop himself. Then he hesitates. “I mean, if that's something you're cool with. I just—” he breaks off.

Amy makes a face. “Jonah...” she says, but then she _doesn't_ , dropping the crumpled up cotton back onto his kitchen floor. “Fine,” she says, edging past him and opening the oven. “But we’re eating this in your bed, then. And I'm going to make a million crumbs.”

Jonah grins so wide his face hurts. “Deal.”


End file.
